


Far or Away

by SylvanWitch



Category: Terriers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hank gives Britt two choices:  Go far (to Mexico) or go away (to prison).  Britt chooses twice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Far or Away

**Author's Note:**

> This picks up where the series left off when it was, alas, cut short by cancellation. I needed to do justice to Hank and Britt. I loved this show and miss it still.

There’s a steady wind from the ocean most days, and even the sagging wooden walls smell of seaweed and brine.  When it’s blowing down the beach at a certain angle, they get the backdraft of the cantina two doors upwind—cooking grease, parched corn, smoked peppers.

 

Gulls cry the time since the only clock in the place is gutted, battery housing spewing wires in a weak tangle.

 

Britt can’t be bothered to fix it, and Hank’s usually too drunk to care.

 

Scuffing into the two-room shack they’re calling home, inescapable grit of sand under his bare feet, Britt squints into the relative gloom and sees Hank sacked out on the sway-backed couch, bleached whale gut peeking from under his dirty tee-shirt, loose threads at the cuffs of his jeans draggling on the floor where one foot has fallen off the cushion.

 

“Hank,” Britt says, and he has to clear his throat. 

 

Nothing.

 

“Hank,” he tries again, louder.  A groan signals attention, and Britt continues.  “Got a job tonight.  Coffee?”

 

He doesn’t wait for an answer this time, just goes to the narrow table against the wall opposite the couch, the one that holds a hot plate, ancient microwave encrusted with a geologic age of burst burrito guts, collection of silverware stolen from various resorts.  Two chipped white diner plates.  Three coffee mugs, one missing a handle.  And in pride of place at the center of the table:  An actual Mr. Coffee, complete with sagging white filters tilting in a precarious pile beside the sugar bowl.

 

Flicking a roach away with a careless finger and a grimace, Britt fills the carafe from the five gallon jug of safe water they keep under the table, spoons in a red-eye portion of the local grind, shakes some cinnamon into the grounds for authenticity, and turns the maker on.

 

Soon, the salt-air-and-dead-fish smell of the place is dampened encouragingly by the scent of Mexican coffee.

 

“Get up, man,” Britt gruffs, passing Hank on his way to the can.  He pauses beside the mattress on the floor in the corner and flicks away a second roach, pulling the sheet up over the makeshift bed to keep other bugs out.

 

The water from the tap in the bathroom is a uric yellow, and he’s careful to let none pass his lips as he splashes his face, dries it on the edge of a graying towel (faded name along one hem telling him it was liberated sometime in the ancient past from a resort that’s now defunct, gape-windowed and sagging a half-mile down-shore from them).

 

Britt doesn’t bother with his reflection, knows already what he’ll see—dark hollows shadowing his eyes, three days’ growth of beard, a nervous tic at the left corner of his mouth where it never quite healed right after that last big job up in TJ went sideways and some asshole kicked him when he was down.

 

Who the fuck wears spurs these days, anyway?

 

When he’s done, Britt uses a bucket to flush the john, waits to make sure it’s not going to back up, takes the bucket to the front porch so they remember to refill it before dark.  There’s a pump a couple of blocks inland where they can get all the water they want, as long as they don’t plan to drink any of it.  Hank says they can’t use seawater instead ‘cause the salt will build up in the works.

 

He pauses there like he often does, after the screen door finishes its squeal-and-slam routine.  The ocean here is an almost unnatural blue, an aquamarine Britt once believed was only used on postcards from unpronounceable places in the South Pacific.  But they’re only a quarter-mile from the power plant, and the hot water makes the sea strange here, a vibrant, eye-piercing blue that makes him squint in the late afternoon sun and raise a hand to shield his eyes.

 

Out on the water, a white sail dissects the horizon like a fin.  _Some lucky bastard is escaping_ , Britt thinks before remembering that’s what he’s supposed to have done, too.

 

Ten months.

 

On the good days, he thinks of Katie all the time, thinks of jokes he’d tell her, shit that happened to him or Hank, ideas he had for making some money.  Plans.

 

He and Katie’d had some plans, he’d thought.  Or at least _a_ plan.  If he’d stayed.

 

Bad days, he doesn’t think of her at all, until something reminds him and the guilt and shock of remembering roll him up inside.  Those first couple of months, he’d actually puke when that happened, until he took to Hank’s remedy for disaster, the cloudy tequila the region’s famous for, which isn’t nearly so bad when you’ve had three or four shots.

 

The first one makes him choke and gag, though, every time, even now.  It gives him hope that maybe some things he won’t get used to.

 

Hank opens the screen door and Britt moves to give him room.  A coffee mug hoves into view, and Britt takes it with a nod and a sound that means, “Thanks.”

 

They’ve got a lot of shorthand now, living like they have been, working the jobs they do.

 

“Local or out of town?”

 

Like that, for example—Hank asking if it’s Mexican cartel boys or Columbian scumbags who need their expertise tonight.

 

“Local.”

 

Hank turns a cooling blow on his coffee into, “Good.”

 

Britt nods absently.  Usually, it’s better to work with Mexicans.  They know most of the guys around here now, are known in turn, do pretty regular work for them.  Less chance of things going sideways when it’s people who know them.

 

Columbians are unpredictable, and the partners avoid them when they can.  When they can’t…

 

Britt has to stop himself from rubbing the corner of his mouth where it jerks and sags.

“Where’d you sleep?”

 

This, too, is shorthand, Britt’s way of asking without prying if Hank made it to a bed—someone’s, anyone’s—or slept in an alley or doorway, as he had a few times before, after benders that became legend at the cantina where they do most of their social drinking.

 

“Elena’s,” Hank answers without elaborating.

 

Britt nods again.  He does that a lot nowadays.  Not much to say.  Despite the danger of their courier work for the cartels, their lives are actually pretty dull.  When they have a job, they prep the boat, make sure they’ve got ammunition, plot a course ahead of time, pay off the local DEA agent and the Federales.

 

When they’re in a dry spell, they mostly drink all night and sleep away the heat of the day, rising shakily at sunset to stumble up the beach to Rita’s for lukewarm cerveza and stomach-searing relleños.

 

Britt coughed up blood two mornings ago, but he doesn’t pay it any mind.  Nothing seems to matter much when one day blurs into the next, a series of bloody sunsets and migraine rises.

 

“Got a letter yesterday,” Hank says, belying the seriousness of his revelation with a casual flick of his wrist, casting the dregs of his coffee onto the sand off of the porch step.

 

Britt doesn’t ask.  Tells himself he doesn’t want to know.  Except he does.  God, but he does. 

 

“She okay?” he asks at last, unable to resist the temptation, knowing it’ll be worse than anything else he does to himself in the sameness of his days and nights.  Worse than running drugs.  Worse than drilling a hole in his stomach with wormy rotgut.

 

“She’s good.  Baby, too.”

 

Britt doesn’t know if it’s a boy or girl, doesn’t know what Katie named the kid.  Doesn’t know if there’s—

 

“She got a new guy?”

 

“Britt.”  Hank’s tone isn’t so much warning as it is weary.  In the earliest days of his escape from justice, Britt had asked a dozen times a day if Hank thought they’d done the right thing, if maybe Britt should go back, serve his time, see his kid grow up.

 

The kid.  His.  Hers. 

 

Whatever.

 

Every time, Hank had said the same thing.  “Why’d we leave at all, then?”  Not accusing, not angry, just patient, biding.

 

And of course, Britt knew why.  He couldn’t do prison.  Not even a year.  No way.  People like him…he’d die in there.  Even if his body made it out intact, some part of him never would.

 

He’s not so sure that part of him is still alive now, either, but he’s too hung over for irony, and besides, they have a job.

At first, they’d promised themselves they’d only work for people who needed them, kind of like their gig back home, but for people who were even more desperate by circumstance or situation.

 

But the last of the bonds had been pawned for four cents on the dollar and they’d worked only one job, finding a lost daughter (who, it turned out, wasn’t lost at all—she’d been killed by her own father for reasons Britt refuses to remember).  And even a shithole shotgun shack perched illegally between a noisy highway and the unnaturally blue water costs money.

 

It’d been their landlord who’d suggested they could make some money using their little fishing boat for more than catching the occasional shark.

 

It was a toss up which was the more dangerous pursuit.

 

At least the sharks only took a finger or two from a careless hand.  The guys they ran drugs from ship to shore for seemed to prefer hacking away at Britt’s soul.

 

Snorting a little at his own train of thought, Britt shakes off the image of Katie’s face if she could see him now and says, “We should see about more ammo for the AK.”

 

“Yeah, okay.”  Hank sighs, and Britt knows the feeling.  Carlos, their supplier, is a whiny little shit.  Plus, they both hate the gun, but they can’t afford to run without a big weapon. 

 

 _Sharks_ , he thinks again, dumping the last of his cold coffee and heading inside to get changed.  _We might just be small fry, but at least we’re still swimming_.

“Won’t say what we’re swimming in,” Britt murmurs, realizing he needs to refill the bucket for the toilet. 

 

From the bathroom in the back, Hank says, “Son of a bitch!” and Britt sighs and picks up the rust-stained blue pail.

 

“Back in ten,” he calls, scuffing into his sandals.

 

Ten minutes.  Ten months.  Some things change.  Some things never will.

 

The pain of remembering Katie doesn’t rob him of coordination like it used to, and this time when her face appears, Britt tries on a shark’s smile, all teeth and mindless, hungry intent.

 

Maybe if he wears it long enough, he’ll forget to remember her at all.  He thinks that might be better in the long run, if they have one.

 

All he knows for now is that kids playing futbol in the street stop their game, sidle casually aside like he’s seen them do for dangerous men.

 

Used to be his smile made other people smile, too.

 

 _Things change_ , he repeats to himself, his latest mantra.  _Things change_.

 

*****

 

 

T-Pud is the block gossip, so when he taps his hand mirror against the bars, most other noise stops.  Lights out happened twenty minutes ago, but as usual, Britt isn’t asleep.

 

For one thing, Bear, his cellmate, snores.

 

For another, he doesn’t sleep soundly with so many people around him.

 

“Juvie’s gettin’ ten,” T-Pud whispers.  Rollins, two doors past Britt’s cell, heehaws with glee.  Juvie wasn’t very popular.  Had a habit of sneaking up on a guy in the shower, which wouldn’t be all that weird in here, of course, except he usually had a bar of soap in his shaking hands and a look in his eyes that made Britt deeply uncomfortable.

 

It was a look that said Juvie’d been broken in the shower and wanted that break re-set.  Wouldn’t be a problem for him now.  He’d shanked the new guy in the laundry room three days ago.  Juvie’d claimed the guy had said something about Juvie’s mom, but who knows?  Kid was crazy, probably good he’s going up to the big pen.

 

As far as the showers go, Britt’s been lucky.  Bear, who didn’t get his name from raiding picnic baskets, had taken to him right off, and not in a ‘Yo, bitch, suck my dick’ kind of way, either.  He thought Britt was smart and funny, and he marveled at the stories Britt’d tell of things he’d done with Hank.

 

Strangely enough, Britt never told stories from his earlier days as a housebreaker. 

 

No, the tales that made him popular involved a con’s favorite thing:  rich men getting what’s theirs—hard and dry and without mercy.

 

Since Bear topped 300 and had to duck to exit their cell, he was a good guy to have on Britt’s side, and Britt knew how to use that advantage.

  
It didn’t hurt that Britt sometimes muled for Bear’s bike gang, who had as many members inside the prison as they did outside, if Bear was to be believed.

 

It wasn’t the swastika-loving kind of gang, anyway, and none of Bear’s brothers on the inside had seemed remotely interested in the shape of Britt’s lips, an interest some other gang types had indicated out loud on several occasions before Bear had given Britt his official protection.

 

He was okay with hiding things up his ass now and then, and he figured these guys would be doing drugs regardless, with or without Britt’s special delivery service.

 

“Shut up,” Bear growls, and Rollins’ hyena-like laughter chokes off.  Rollins is a scrawny tweaker, maybe 140 on spaghetti night.  Britt’s gotten pretty good at calculating weight and proportionate threat in the ten months he’s been in here.

 

There’s the general susurrus of a hundred guys getting comfortable again when T-Pud taps on the bars once more.

 

“Slim is short.”

 

It’s not code, not exactly.  Slim’s a guy one tier up, in on a dime for violating his parole—by trying to kill his parole officer.  Short means he can’t make his protection payment to the League, the prison’s well-represented Aryan gang.

 

T-Pud’s not just talking trash.  Slim’s a main player, even if he doesn’t have ink of his own.  His connection to the outside is solid, and he runs plenty of black market shit in and out of the place.  Got at least two guards in his pocket, Britt thinks.

 

Makes no sense, him not having his payment.

 

 _Don’t get involved_ , a little voice reminds him.  If it sounds suspiciously like Hank, that’s alright.  They’d made a deal in front of the cop shop where Hank had let him out the day Britt turned himself in.

 

“I’ll stay sober if you stay safe,” Hank had said.  He’d made Britt pinky-swear, which had left Britt giggling his way into lock-up, not exactly the most auspicious start for his career as a hardened convict.

 

So far, neither of them had broken the deal.  Britt doesn’t want to be the first, but Slim’s a pretty decent guy, if you can overlook his hired muscle and their ugly 88s and iron crosses.

 

Just as Britt’s about to do something monumentally stupid, a voice ghosts down from Slim’s block, only it’s not Slim.

 

Not the Aryans, either.

 

“He’s ours,” an unsettling voice says, quiet but carrying.  There’s a long, unbreathing hush and then uncomfortable rustling sweeps the blocks in a wave.

 

“Jesus, what the fuck’s Slim thinking?” Bear whispers, giving voice to Britt’s exact thought.

 

Enrique “El Diablo” Ruiz says nothing in response to the unrest still audible in the darkness of the prison, and Britt’s glad.  The guy’s voice makes his guts go cold and watery.

 

Not only is Ruiz the baddest mofo in there; he’s crazy, to boot, the kind of calm-eyed, steady-handed crazy that carves kittens out of pregnant cats.

 

No one goes near him or his crew if they can help it. 

 

“Something’s going on,” Britt whispers back to his cellmate on the top bunk, who grunts a “No shit” and shifts onto his side.  Overhead, the metal frame warps and squeals, protesting Bear’s weight.  Not for the first time, Britt wonders if he’d die immediately were the bed to give way or be smothered slowly under Bear’s resisting bulk.

 

“You think it’s important?”  For as long as he’s been there, Britt’s still not clear on cellblock politics.  Bear’s been in for a long stretch, though, and seems to have a talent for predicting the limited future of the prison’s many inhabitants.

 

“Think there’s gonna be a war.”

 

“You in on it?” Britt asks, wondering what a war will mean to him.  He’s got two months—less than that now, he realizes.  Fifty-nine days.

Fifty-nine days until he can hold his—her— _their_ baby for the first time, kiss Katie for the first time as a newly free man, give Hank a hard slap on the back and a heartfelt, “Thanks, man,” for taking care of Katie and the kid while Britt was inside.

 

“Nah, we’ll be neutral.”

 

“Why?”

 

“’cause no one who knows what’s good for him gets between the Beaners and those Nazi shitheads.  Every one of ‘em on both sides is crazier than a rabid ‘coon.”

 

Britt pauses to unpack the real meaning from the racist crap and comes out with a dim understanding.

 

“So this is a color thing?”

 

Bear grunts.  “How the fuck should I know?  Maybe Juarez got her knickers in a twist over Edelwaite or some shit.”

 

Again, Britt has to figure out what that means.  Juarez is the tranny who’s Ruiz’s main squeeze.  Edelwaite is the League enforcer, a big fuck with more muscles than brains, but Britt can maybe see how someone might find him attractive.

 

The penny drops. 

 

“Oh, like Romeo and Juliet?”

 

Bear grunts again, a different tenor this time—interest.  “Those some people you know?”

 

“Nah, man, it’s a story.  From a long time ago.  You want to hear it?”

 

“Tomorrow.”

 

“Yeah, okay.”

 

Britt gets a lot of mileage out of Shakespeare, which is pretty cool, since he only half paid attention in English class the year they did some of his plays.  Britt can’t be blamed, though.  Elsie Warder was in that period, with her micro-minis and tiny, tight tank tops. 

 

“Britt?”

 

Surprised—Bear almost never initiates talk, much less after lights out—Britt whispers, “Yeah, Bear?”

 

“You don’t gotta worry.  Me ‘n’ the boys’ll keep you safe.  I know you’re out soon, and you got a kid and your woman to take care of.”

 

It’s the nicest thing anyone has said to him in here, and Britt feels heat pooling behind his eyes.  He blinks, glad for once that it’s so dark on the block at night, and whispers back when he can do it without sounding weak.

 

“Thanks, man.”

“Besides, you’re the only one in this shithole who knows how to tell a good story.”

 

Bear’s weight resettles, the bed frame shivers in protest and then stills, and Britt tries not to think about what it means that Slim is working for the Devil now.

 

He also tries not to think about Katie.

 

At first, that was out of some weird sense of respect, like thinking about her would dirty her up, bring her inside here with him.

 

After awhile, though, when he was still trying to adjust and the only thing dragging him through the long, terrifying days was the thought of her waiting on the outside for him…after awhile, he couldn’t help but think of her.

 

He dreaded and loved visitation days.  Loved them because it meant seeing her.  Hated them because it meant having to let her go again.  Let _them_ go, that writhing bundle of energy inside who Britt swore was going to be a special teams kicker when he grew up.

 

“She,” Katie would automatically correct with a new smile, a soft, wistful smile that she only wore when she talked about the possibilities of after.  After the baby was born.  After Britt got out.  After they got married.

 

He tries not to think about Katie now because that leads to worry and temptation in equal parts.  The first does him no good when he isn’t in a place that he can do anything to help her.  The other makes him hard and hot and embarrassed. 

 

Most nights, the first ten minutes after lights out is full of groans, shifting bed-frames, bitten off curses, and the rustling of skin on skin that can mean only one thing—a hundred guys stripping their engines in unison.

 

Not Britt, though.  He was never into that exhibitionism crap, and besides, it’s private, his dreams of Katie.  Still, it aches sometimes, enough that he has no choice but to touch himself just to relieve the agony.

 

Then he bites the inside of his cheek raw and squeezes his eyes shut, tries to keep his breathing even as he does it.

 

Bear never says anything—never has to.  Usually, he’s doing it himself, after all, and there’s a kind of code that cellmates follow.

 

This night, though, Britt doesn’t feel up to the struggle, doesn’t want to get hard and then resist and then give in.

 

So he thinks about Hank, who seems to be doing okay.  He trades off one visit a month with Katie, and it’d been his visit yesterday.

 

“You look good,” Hank had said, like he always did.

 

“You, too,” Britt had answered, ditto.

 

And Hank had.  Good color, clear eyes.  Britt thinks his friend is going to make it through this, too.

 

“So I did this job last week…”  And Hank had fed him another story he could share, coin of the realm, at least for Britt.  When Hank’s time was up, he’d shaken Britt’s hand and then met him as he stood with one of those half-hug, back-slap deals men do in public places.

 

Britt hangs on to that, to the strength in his friend’s hands, the sense that Hank would be there for him when he got out, sober and smart-assed and ready to take on some hopeless cause in the name of what’s more or less good, maybe right, and probably true.

 

 _Fifty-nine days_ , Britt thinks, lacing his fingers behind his head and trying to relax.  _Fifty-nine days_.

 

Just as his eyes are starting to sag, just as he starts to sink into the grey twilight between worlds, there’s a tap-tap-tap from down the cell.

 

T-Pud’s radio voice comes scratchy down the dark aisle:

 

“Pssst, the Bard’s on short time as of today, bring it.”

 

Soft applause, like the world’s most dangerous golf game, follows Britt into sleep.

 

 


End file.
